If you had quickly popped your head into courtroom 508 at College Park on Wednesday, there’s a single word you would probably have heard: feces. It came up constantly.

“There’s some feces on the floor,” said Toronto police Det. Scott Grondin. He was describing photographs shown in court. “This is all cat feces.”

Later, defence lawyer Walter Fox asked him if that “yellow-green mound” looked like feces. “In your evidence, it’s not pure feces. It could be matted hair and feces,” he told the officer.

The excremental subject matter dominated the second day of an animal cruelty trial, where lawyer and former George Brown College professor Diane Way, 66, stands accused of harbouring more than 100 cats in her north Toronto home.

She has pleaded not guilty to charges of cruelty and causing unnecessary suffering to animals.

The accusations stem from April 2011, when a canvasser called 911 after a strong smell emanating from the house led her to fear something was dead and rotting inside. Responders soon discovered the home at 144 Manor Rd. E. was filthy and crawling with cats, some of which Crown witnesses have described as emaciated and covered with crusty and oozing sores.

On Wednesday, Fox outlined some possible explanations for the number of cats in the house. He suggested there was an overpopulation of cats in Toronto at the time, and that black cats are more difficult to give up for adoption. Previous testimony indicated many of the cats at the home were black.

“Placing that many cats would be a real problem,” he said, “even for the OSPCA (Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).”

The court was also shown a series of photographs from inside Way’s home, taken by Grondin, a forensics officer with the Toronto police.

The photographs showed detritus and books, rusting pipes, cobwebs and exposed wire, broken furniture and a mattress with deep brown and yellow smears, Grondin said. A layer of what appeared to be deep brown gunk caked the floor of the home, the windowsills and tops of appliances. This, said Grondin, was “walked-over” cat feces. He added that mould appeared to be growing on walls, food in the fridge, and even on the feces itself in some places.

“You have the feces along the floor and then you actually have droppings on top of that, with the mould growing on it,” he said, describing a photo of the home’s basement.

The photographs also showed some plates on bowls on the floor in the house. Grondin said they had “a little water” in them, but he didn’t see any food. There were also several boxes of cat litter in a room on the second floor, he said.

Questioning Grondin, Fox suggested that part of the apparent mess seen in the photographs was a result of a search conducted when authorities were scouring the house in search of a person or a dead body.

Fox also asked Grondin if he’d agree the layer of brown feces on the ground was instead “matted hair that had come off the cats.” Grondin did not, but assented that it’s possible the substance observed throughout the home was a combination of feces and cat hair.